France Bans Funeral Rituals and Body Repatriation Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Muslim funeral homes are prohibited from performing funeral washing on people who died of the Coronavirus and from organizing the repatriation of bodies to their countries of origin.

This prohibition is extended to all persons, whether or not they died of COVID-19, during this crisis period. "Any deceased body is potentially contaminating and standard precautions must be applied when handling any body," declares the High Council of Public Health of the kingdom, with regard to the management of the body of a person who died of COVID-19.

This prohibition has received a favorable response from the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), which specifies that it is as a precautionary and preventive measure that the hospitals have made this decision, which is only intended to protect the living and is not in contradiction with the prescriptions of Islam.

The prescriptions relating to respect for the dignity of the deceased must be observed without endangering the lives of others, in a context of the COVID-19 epidemic.